


Hold Fast

by provocative_envy



Series: unfinished [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Awkward Flirting, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Light Angst, Minor Character Death, Period-Typical Sexism, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Treasure Hunting, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-03-11 07:32:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13519452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: “You’vekidnappedme,” Daphne breathes, aghast.He winces. “A bit, yeah.”





	1. I

* * *

 

The air is hot and heavy and sweetly perfumed with the scent of sea salt and sugarcane. 

Daphne flicks a frightened glance back over her shoulder, abruptly grateful for the way the silver-bright light of the moon illuminates the winding dirt road, the shimmering pink silk of her slippers and the gossamer lace hem of her dress and the small, age-worn brass compass in her hand—because it's late, not quite quiet, and she's so very, very lost.  

She should never have read that letter. 

She should never have  _stolen_  that map. 

She should never have snuck into her father's study or  _out_  of her father's house, should never have sworn Astoria to secrecy, sworn  _herself_ to even worse, because now— 

A lazy gust of wind rustles through the towering fields of long, summer-fragrant grass. 

Daphne freezes. 

" _Ron_ ," a low, decidedly common male voice hisses, and then the grass is rustling  _again_  and a man with a tattered black tricorn on his head and a gleaming silver swordat his hip is stepping out onto the road, brushing sand off the seat of his breeches. "Ron, is that you? Did you find anything?" 

The man is tall. Broad. Young. His skin is a deep, sun-bronzed brown, a jarring contrast to the bleached-white linen of his shirt, and he has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing an odd, triangular-shaped tattoo on one wrist and the telltale pink gleam of a scar—a  _brand—_ on the other: a single waxy, slightly crooked 'P' curving around the muscle in his forearm, like he'd had to grow into it. 

Pirate. 

 _Pirate_. 

Daphne stares at him, scalp prickling, throat burning, a scream beginning to build and build and  _build_ in her chest— 

"Oh, come  _on_ ," the pirate sighs when he finally notices her. "Seriously?"  

Her grip tightens on the compass. "I—I'm—excuse me?" 

"Christ," he mutters, snatching his hat off to rake a long-fingered hand through thick, dark, unfashionably short hair. "Right, I don't know which bloody brothel you're from, but I don't have time to—" 

" _Brothel_ ," Daphne bleats, jaw going slack as she chokes on a gasp of shock and fear and dread and  _indignation_ _._ _"Excuse_ _you_ , I am not a—a—how dare you!" 

The pirate squints at her with a frankly insulting amount of confusion. "What?" 

"I am not from a  _brothel_ , you—you— _scoundrel._ " She lifts her chin and tries not to let on that she's really rather very close to crying. "My name is  _Daphne Greengrass_ , and my father is the  _commander_ of the—" 

"Oh,  _come on_ ," the pirate sighs again, exasperated. He purses his lips and jams his hat back on his head, intently scanning the surrounding fields for...movement? Danger? "What are you doing all the way out here, then? Why are you alone?" 

"I—I'm not alone," Daphne lies, lashes fluttering as she blinks, desperately overwhelmed by a panicky, too-late scrap of self-preservation because how, how,  _how_ could she have been so  _stupid?_  "Or, well, I won't be soon. I'm—I'm here to meet someone." 

The pirate cocks an eyebrow. "Really." 

"Yes." She swallows. "Really." 

"Who?" 

"I can't imagine that's any of your business." 

He slowly taps his thumb against the hilt of his sword. "Can't you?" 

Daphne takes a shallow, trembling breath, the jagged edges of the stolen map scraping at the undersides of her breasts. She digs her nails into the meat of her palm. "My father—" 

"Yeah, I know who you said your father was," the pirate interrupts, sounding frustrated. 

"Who I said my...you don't believe me?" 

"Why would I?" 

Before Daphne can respond, there's a frantic, hastily muffled shout from somewhere nearby, followed almost instantly by a loud boom and a metallic whistle and a blistering wave of heat rippling through the air, disturbing the earth at her feet, and she flinches and she jumps and she realizes— 

It's a bullet. 

Someone is  _shooting_  at her. 

The pirate unsheathes his sword with a swift, gracefully practiced motion, darting forward to wrap an arm around her waist and fling her backwards, behind him, all the while snarling, "Who the  _fuck_ —"  

"Right, right, to your right!" Daphne shrieks, clapping her hand over her mouth as a man wearing a crackled silver facemask and a green velvet waistcoat charges out of the grass, tosses a smoking pistol aside, and unsheathes his own sword, drawing it up in a viciously intimidating arc, shoulders squared, stance combative. 

The pirate just barks out a harsh, guttural laugh, though, swishing his blade, clucking his tongue, drawling, "He's been gone for  _seven years_ and you're still doing his bidding from the bloody grave? Christ, you really are all cowards, aren't you." 

The masked man growls, taking a clumsily furious, poorly-timed step forward, slashing his sword through the air, letting it clash against the pirate's, steel grating, grinding, sparking, and that's it, Daphne thinks, a uniquely aggressive blend of horror and awe and paralyzing, deafening incredulity rooting her to the ground. 

They start to fight in earnest. 

And the pirate is fast, almost deceptively so, his movements as silky as they are reckless, but the masked man is bigger, brawnier, the sheer power behind each hefty, two-handed swing of his sword ringing through Daphne's eardrums as the pirate blocks and dives and parries, the sleek lines of muscle in his upper back bunching and straining; and then the masked man rather unexpectedly kicks out with one leg, knocking the pirate off-balance, leaving Daphne fully, visibly unprotected— 

The masked man falters.   

Hesitates.  

Tilts his head to the side like he can't quite believe what he's seeing, like he can't quite believe  _who_  he's seeing, and Daphne's spine goes positively liquid beneath the weight of the terror that slams through her. It's sweltering. Nauseating. Because this man—this man with a mask on his face and gunpowder on his fingertips—he recognizes her. 

He  _knows_  her. 

The pirate seizes the opportunity to lunge forward, then, twisting his arm and stabbing his sword right through the masked man's stomach, blood not spurting out so much as it trickles down, dribbles around the crease in the blade as he stumbles, drops to his knees, coughs and gurgles and— 

Daphne squeezes her eyes shut. 

"Shit," the pirate pants, and the ensuing silence is suffocating,  _evocative_ , far too loud for all that it's just a precursor to a brief series of other, far less palatable sounds; footsteps crunching, steady and sure, and the squelching hiss of a sword being wiped down, ominously casual, and the gravelly thud of a body being laid to rest. The rasping slither of a mask being removed. The thoughtful hum of an identity being revealed. "Hey. Greengrass, you said? C'mere." 

Daphne quickly shakes her head. "No. No, I don't want...please." 

An impatient exhale. "Christ, I'm not going to make you  _look,_ just—here." The pirate carefully grabs her by the wrist, presumably to lead her over to the body, and his hand is rough. Callused. Warm. "There. Just his face. Can you do that for me, love?" 

Daphne's jaw clicks as she grits her teeth, flares her nostrils, gnaws on the inside of her cheek—there's an irritating, smugly spiteful note of condescension belying the pirate's gentle tone of voice, and it's making her want to lash out, making her want to do something shocking, making her want to prove him wrong. It's strange. Unsettling. 

She clears her throat. 

She opens her eyes. 

And then she stares, utterly unable to muster up the courage to do anything else, because Vincent Crabbe—homely, bumbling, inconceivably  _dull_ Vincent Crabbe— _Astoria's_  Vincent Crabbe—is lying dead on the ground, paler than usual,  _softer_ than usual, and that's— 

"He knew you," the pirate states, startling Daphne into glancing up at him. He's mopping the sweat off his face with the hem of his shirt, and his bare torso is as brown as the rest of him, leanly sculpted with muscle, a skinny strip of dark, wiry hair trailing down from his navel, disappearing into his breeches. He kicks at Vincent's ankle. "Which means you knew him. How well, I wonder?" 

Daphne's lips quiver.  

Blood is splattered everywhere, gruesome and viscous and shiny, pooling beneath the flat of Vincent's back, oozing out of the ragged looking wound in his gut, seeping syrup-thick into the churned-up earth and staining the pebbles along the side of the road a hot, pulpy crimson and it doesn't smell like sugarcane anymore, like the ocean, like flowers and citrus and leftover sunshine, no, it smells like— 

It smells like iron. 

Like rust. 

Like shackles and gunpowder and tobacco and the polish her father's valet has used on his boots for as long as she can possibly remember. 

"Vincent Crabbe. He's...was...he was betrothed to my younger sister," Daphne eventually manages to whisper, an ache splintering through all the empty space in her lungs. She's breathing, just barely, but the heat—the adrenaline—a glistening sheen of nerve-tinged sweat is soaking through her skin, her undergarments, likely smudging the ink on the map she'd stolen earlier. "He...they were...he was going to take her away. To Scotland. I don't...he isn't..." 

Hiding the map in her corset, Daphne thinks dimly, had been a spectacularly bad idea. 

But then she's huffing out a giggle, high-pitched and hysterical _,_ and the pirate is eyeing her with a puzzling combination of disdain and suspicion and thinly-veiled concern, and the stars are swimming in the sky and the grass is swaying despite the stillness in the air and perhaps she  _isn't_ breathing, perhaps she's truly, simply forgotten how, because there are sizzling spots of light flashing in her periphery and her pulse is sluggishly stuttering to a halt and time is crawling, stretching, tearing— 

"Oh, come _on,_ " the pirate groans, and it's like déjà vu, like serendipity, as he rushes forward to catch her as she falls. "Seriously?" 

The world goes quiet again. 

 

* * *

 


	2. II

* * *

 

Daphne comes to in slow, fractured increments. 

She's lying on a bed, on scratchy, homespun linen sheets that smell of soap and sweat and, more faintly, of sandalwood and cardamom and something else, too, something heady and fresh that she doesn't recognize but finds instinctively, inexplicably intoxicating all the same; and she's fully clothed, the boning of her corset cutting into her waist, doubtless leaving bruises on her ribs, pushing her breasts up high enough that a square scrap of parchment could be pushed  _down_ and nestled in-between; and she isn't hurt, she decides, taking careful, cautious stock of her body, her mind, the hasty rearrangement of her hair—but that's when she remembers what she's done. 

Remembers what had  _happened_. 

She sits up with a sharply indrawn breath, glancing wildly around, and realizes, with some alarm, that she's on a ship. Captain's quarters, judging by the size of the room and the large porcelain bathtub situated in the far corner. Additionally, there are maps tacked to the wall, haphazardly marked with various letters and numbers and symbols that don't make very much sense to her, and a massive cedar chest at the foot of the bed, heavily padlocked and gleaming with oil.  

She isn't alone. 

"Awake, then?" the pirate—the pirate who'd  _killed_  Vincent—drawls from where he's seated at a narrow, plank-wood desk, shoulders slouched, legs splayed wide, eyebrows twitching neatly upwards. He's twirling a white feathered quill between his fingers, a battered leather journal at his elbow, flaking gold leaf letters stamped across the cover. "Good. We need to talk." 

Daphne folds her hands in her lap, valiantly managing not to do anything too overtly mortifying, like burst into tears. "Talk about what, exactly?" 

The pirate snorts. "D'you know who I am?" 

"I...no. No, I'm afraid not." 

"You absolutely sure about that, love?" 

She furrows her brow. "Have we been introduced?" 

He regards her with an unexpectedly cool measure of detachment. "Daphne," he finally murmurs, idly brushing the feathered end of his quill against the stopper of an inkwell. " _Daphne Greengrass_." 

"Yes," she confirms, suppressing a shiver. "That's—my name. As I've said." 

"Mm." 

"Well?" 

"Mm?" 

"Aren't you going to tell me yours?" 

One side of his mouth tilts up in a dodgy sort of grin. "You're really going to pretend you don't know?" 

Daphne smooths the fabric of her dress over her thighs, suddenly, uncomfortably aware of how  _alone_  they are. She's on a ship.  _His_  ship, she's beginning to suspect, which really does beg the question— 

"Why am I here?" she asks, voice emerging reedy and thin and politely, painstakingly neutral.  

"You fainted." 

"So?" 

"Couldn't very well leave you unconscious in the middle of the bloody road, could I?" 

"Well, actually—" 

"Not when  _Vincent Crabbe_  could've had friends hanging around," the pirate interrupts, more loudly, before pausing. "Although, now that I think about it, maybe you'd have preferred that. Betrothed to your sister, you said?" 

Daphne blanches at the insinuation. "That isn't—I wouldn’t—you could've just taken me home." 

"To your father's house?" The pirate sounds amused. "If I'd been in the mood to be arrested, certainly." 

She lowers her eyes. "Well, then. Thank you for your...your hospitality, but I should really return to—" 

“He seemed surprised to see you, didn’t he?” the pirate goes on, too casually, tapping the pad of his thumb against the spine of the journal. “ _Vincent?_ ” 

Daphne doesn’t allow herself to blink as she stares down at the sinuously rocking floor of the cabin. “We weren’t particularly well-acquainted.” 

“No?” 

“Our fathers were friends. Astoria…” Daphne trails off, stomach churning. “She wasn’t particularly well-acquainted with him, either.” 

The pirate grunts. “Who were you meeting tonight, then?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“ _Who_ ,” he says, deliberately slow, “were you meeting tonight?” 

Daphne licks her lips. “I...I wasn’t meeting anyone.” 

“That’s not what you said earlier.” 

“I lied.” 

“Why?” 

“Why did I lie?” 

“Mm.” 

“Because I—well, I was frightened, wasn’t I?” 

“I don’t know, were you?” 

“Stop doing that.” 

“Doing what?” 

“Repeating everything I’m saying like I haven’t been speaking English,” Daphne snaps, jaw clicking shut. “I’m not—I don’t—you know perfectly well that I was frightened of you then and that I’m frightened of you now. You don’t need to trick me into admitting it.” 

There’s a beat of oddly fragile silence, and then she looks up, just in time to catch the pirate frown and avert his gaze. His chair creaks as he shifts around, leans back to stretch his legs out, and several seconds go by before he clears his throat, gently deposits the journal on the desk, and crosses his arms over his chest. 

“We’re at sea,” he offers flatly. 

“Excuse me?” 

He shrugs, feigning nonchalance, and then cracks his knuckles. “Even if I wanted to let you go, I can’t. We’re two hours out from—” 

“You’ve  _kidnapped_ me,” Daphne breathes, aghast.  

He winces. “A bit, yeah.” 

“But— _why?_ ” 

His expression is difficult to read. “Your father,” he starts, and then breaks off, raking his fingers through his hair. A nervous habit, she guesses, remembering how he’d done it earlier. “Your father may...or may not...be in possession of something that may...or may not...be quite valuable to me.” 

“May...or may not...” Daphne echoes, flummoxed. “You don’t even  _know?_ ” 

The pirate’s mouth twitches irritably. “It’s complicated.” 

“It isn’t, actually,” she retorts, pinching her fingertips together. “Because you’re going to try and ransom me to my father, and he’s going to  _laugh in your face_.” 

The pirate jerks his chin up, looking startled. “He’s going to—wait, what?” 

She thinks about the letter she’d found in her father’s study, the one that had outlined in exhaustive detail precisely how thoroughly he was being blackmailed and precisely how miserable Daphne’s own future would therefore be—and then she thinks about Astoria withering away in some frigid, god-awful ancestral  _tomb_  masquerading as a Highlands castle, thinks about how forlorn her smiles have been lately, how resigned her laughter— 

Daphne slides off the bed. 

Straightens her spine. Lifts her chin. Looks down at the pirate as imperiously as she knows how, which isn’t very, and then wastes a split-second silently reeling at how brilliantly, extraordinarily green his eyes are up close. In the light.  

“This  _thing_ that may or may not be valuable, that my father may or may not be in possession of,” she says, hoping the pirate won’t notice the faint tremor distorting her words. “What is it?” 

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” 

“Maybe I can tell you if he has it.” 

“Maybe,” the pirate agrees, studying her intently. “Or maybe you can just tell me what you were really doing in that sugarcane field tonight.” 

Daphne gives in to the urge to bite down on her bottom lip, the edges of the stolen map chafing the sensitive skin between her breasts. She wonders, somewhat fatalistically, if it’s really a secret worth keeping—this, her one and only source of meaningful leverage.  

“Right.” She sighs, throwing her shoulders back, reaching with unsteady fingers for the dainty silver clasp holding the front of her bodice together. “Right, I’ll just—” 

Heavy, lumbering footsteps sound from outside the door to the cabin, followed by a brisk knock and a cheerfully insolent, “Oi, Harry! Good night for a mutiny?” 

Another man—another  _pirate_ , surely—steps into the room, a tall, lanky redhead with freckles on his nose and dirt smudged across his jaw. He takes a perfunctory look around, seeming to automatically gravitate towards the dark-haired pirate, and then stops, mouth going slack and pale blue eyes going almost comically wide when he sees Daphne. 

Daphne, who’s tugging at the laces of her corset, unusually loose from all her earlier fumbling, and whose dress is now gaping open, exposing the lace-trimmed top of her chemise and the rounded, truly exaggerated curves of her cleavage.  

“Fuck  _me_ , lock the  _fucking_  door next time, will you?” the redhead demands, spinning around to scowl at the dark-haired pirate. Harry.  _Harry_. “Already had me help you carry ‘er halfway across the bloody island, and now you’re—” 

“Oh,” Daphne says, and she can  _feel_ , physically feel, the heat of the blush staining the apples of her cheeks a dark, splotchy pink. Belatedly, she snatches at the front of her bodice, dragging it up, and stumbles back towards the foot of the bed. “Oh, no, that isn’t—we weren’t—I’m unmarried!” 

“Christ,” Harry mutters, raking his hand through his hair again, looking bizarrely flustered. “I don’t—you know, it doesn’t matter, let’s just—what did you need, Ron?” 

The redhead— _Ron_ , apparently—shifts his weight around, scratching at the back of his neck. “Crew needs to know where we’re going next.” 

“Ask Hermione.” 

“I did. She said to ask you.” 

“Well, go ask her again.” 

“ _You_  go ask her again.” 

“I’m a little  _busy_ , in case it isn’t obvious—” 

Ron snorts. “Oh, no, it is, don’t you bloody worry.” 

“—and what the fuck’s the problem, anyway? It wasn’t there. We don’t have the—you know. We’re going by process of elimination from here on out, aren’t we?” 

“Yeah.” Ron puffs his cheeks out. “Yeah, guess so. We don’t have to turn around, then?” 

Harry wrinkles his nose. “Why would we do that?” 

“Why would we—are you joking?” 

“No? What?” 

“Harry. Mate.” Ron glances over at Daphne with thinly-veiled suspicion, which she privately, if not a bit frantically, thinks is incredibly unfair. It isn’t as if she  _wants_ to be here. It isn’t as if she’d  _volunteered._ “She’s—you know. You can’t  _keep_  her.” 

Harry sputters, jerking back in his chair hard enough for its legs to screech across the floor, his teeth glinting white and bright in the swinging lamplight as he opens and closes his mouth, floundering for a response. 

“Anyway, I should…” Ron gestures vaguely towards the corridor. “Find Hermione, let her know the plan’s still shite, I’ll leave you to…” Another gesture, less vague, more explicitly crude. “We’ll drop anchor in the morning, yeah?”  

Harry glares. “Get out.” 

Ron sarcastically tips an imaginary hat in Harry’s direction, leveling Daphne with one last painfully skeptical  _look_ , before slipping back out the door, closing it firmly behind him. 

Harry coughs, then, slouching farther down in his seat. “Sorry about that.” 

Daphne fiddles with a hole in the lace of her chemise. She isn’t actually stupid, no matter what her governess used to say, and the map in her corset—the map she’d stolen with only the barest, most desperate, half-formed, ill-conceived notion of what to do with it—it’s clearly much more important than she’d thought it was. Than her father had thought it was. 

Or maybe it isn’t. 

Maybe it isn’t important at all, and Harry—who Daphne is having enormous difficulty reconciling with the deadly, obnoxiously confident  _pirate_  who had, only a few hours ago,  _stabbed_  Vincent without even a hint of remorse—is searching for something else.  

“What do you want from my father?” she asks, carefully bland.  

Harry drums his fingers against the outer bend of his knee, and Daphne tries not to watch, tries not to stare at the scars and the calluses and the blunt-cut nails, tries not to remember how his hands had felt on her skin, her bare arms, gripping the curve of her waist as he’d shoved her back— _protected_  her. 

“A map,” Harry eventually answers. “I want a map. Of sorts.” 

Daphne gnaws on the inside of her cheek, measures her words, the weight of the potential consequences. “I—earlier—when I was...with my dress—I wasn’t trying to—” 

“Seduce me?” 

“I wouldn’t really know how to, no.” 

“You wouldn't—right.” He huffs out a laugh, breathlessly sincere and wryly self-deprecating. “What were you doing, then?” 

Her throat clicks as she swallows. “If you’d be so kind as to give me a moment of privacy, I have the...I believe I have the map you're after.” 

In an instant, Harry’s lurching upwards, automatically reaching for his sword, eyes sharpening, narrowing,  _hardening_ , like he’s not entirely used to being surprised but is more than used to the rare surprise he does encounter being quite summarily awful.  

“Explain,” he grits out. 

Daphne presses her lips together and looks pointedly down at her cleavage, still partially visible beneath the relaxed laces of her corset. Harry tracks her gaze, his expression flickering with something decidedly hot and impossibly wistful before he exhales noisily and glances away, wrist knocking the hilt of his sword as he seems to struggle with where to put his hands. With what to do with them.  

“My father,” she says, a warbling hitch in her voice. “He received a letter, from England, that—it greatly upset him.” 

“And?” 

“I read it. I...I snuck into his study. To do so.” 

“ _And?_ ” 

“And the map—it was...it was there, too, and the letter, well, it implied that the map was...you know. A treasure map.” 

“Why’d you take it?” 

Daphne thinks about the final few lines of that letter—the ones about  _her_ , about Astoria, the ones that had read as an afterthought of an afterthought and hadn’t even merited a politely-phrased threat should their father refuse to comply—and scrapes her thumbnail over the lace of her chemise. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Daphne says, almost too quietly. “I have it, and if you’d just—” 

“Yeah, alright,” Harry interrupts, spinning around to face the door. “Go ahead.” 

“You won’t—you aren’t  _leaving?_ ” 

“No,” he says curtly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sorry, just—you’re a Greengrass.” 

“So?” 

“It’s complicated.” 

“You’ve already used that excuse.” 

He snorts. “Yeah, well, I’m trying not to insult you.” 

Daphne’s forehead creases in a frown, but instead of responding, she releases the front clasp of her bodice again, yanking at her corset, fingers trembling just enough for the laces to wind up hopelessly tangled—meanwhile, Harry rocks back on his heels, fidgeting with the cuff of his shirt, the long, well-muscled line of his back growing more and more tense as the sounds of rustling fabric and whispering silk and slowly yielding laces echo around the cabin. Finally, though, she manages to grasp the edge of the yellowing square of parchment, slide it out from between her breasts, and toss it towards his feet. 

“What…” he trails off, stiffening at the sight of the map, and then looks back over at her just as she’s tugging her dress up again.  

Their eyes catch. 

And then he’s almost clumsily ducking down to scoop up the map, squinting at it, studying it, hissing under his breath, “Fucking  _snakes_ ,” as he strides towards the desk, rifling through the pages of the previously discarded journal, jamming the nib of a quill into an inkpot and scribbling—numbers? Letters? Coordinates?—onto a spare sheet of paper, periodically consulting the compass rose in the bottom right corner of the map, tongue peeking out from between his lips. 

“That’s what you wanted, then?” Daphne asks. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. Bloody useless without—” Harry nods at the journal. “But that’s everyone else’s problem, not mine.” 

Daphne curls her toes inside her slippers, summoning what’s left of her courage. It isn’t much. “So—so you can take me home now. Right? Since you have—you have what you wanted? And there’s no reason for you to...to keep me…” 

Harry doesn’t reply.  

Not for a while. 

He's done scribbling, but now he's idly rubbing his chin, going against the grain of the stubble there, tapping his foot and rolling his shoulders back and looking contemplative. Guarded. 

"When I'm done, sure," he hedges. 

Daphne blinks. Rapidly. “Excuse me?” 

“I was mistaken. About the location of the last clue. This map, it’s very clever, actually, and my—well, my  _quest_ , I suppose—it’s quite time-sensitive, so...as soon that’s all done, yeah, I can—return you.” Harry grimaces. “If you’d like.” 

Daphne continues to blink, unseeing, disbelieving, the tips of her fingers twitching in the folds of her skirt, and she’s  _shaking_ , she realizes dimly, she’s shaking and she’s furious and she’s thinking about getting up early on Astoria’s birthday to sew mismatched seed pearls onto the lapels of a miniature velvet jacket, about the porcelain dolls their mother had ordered from London and the laugh lines around her father’s mouth and the sun-dappled freckles on her cheeks that had been acceptable when she was twelve, fourteen, sixteen, but not now, not  _recently_ , and she’s thinking about how delicately, disconcertingly  _unfair_  it all is— 

“No, you don’t,” Daphne stammers, “you don’t understand, my sister, she—Vincent Crabbe was the—Vincent Crabbe was the  _good_  option, I told her I'd be...she’s going to be—I have to—” 

“Christ,” Harry cuts her off, raking his hand through his hair  _again_. “Isn’t this what you were after? Some kind of  _adventure?_  Or whatever—whatever silly bloody  _fairytale_ you think includes a  _treasure map?_ ” 

Daphne stares at him, hard, something small and soft and vulnerable tucking itself back inside her chest. She looks away. Collects her composure. Outside, through the lone porthole, she can see the sky, a deep purple-black, studded with stars and clouds and moonlight, the horizon as dark as it is endless.  

She’s exhausted, suddenly. 

She should never have read that letter. 

She should never have  _stolen_  that map. 

“Adventure,” she repeats, without inflection. “Yes, of course.” 

 

* * *

 


	3. III

* * *

 

Daphne sleeps poorly that night. 

She's plagued by the same two odd, spectacularly surreal nightmares—sharks and sea monsters and an empty, sparkling, white-sand beach, a razor-backed lizard flicking its tongue out from atop a sunbaked slab of granite, a rubber-necked vulture circling Astoria's golden-blonde head,  piles of hollow coconuts and rotting plantains and the daisy chains their mother used to weave for them when it was simply too hot to nap, to breathe, to do anything; and then there's Vincent Crabbe's prone, lifeless form, his beady brown eyes twitching open, vengeance and venom in his blank, otherworldly gaze, and there's Harry in the background, holding a glowing, red-hot metal brand to Astoria's wrist, a jagged letter 'P', and then squinting at Daphne like she should've known better, an ethereal cadence to his voice as he says, so very matter-of-fact:  

 _"Well, it's all your fault, isn't it?"_  

Eventually, Daphne wakes up to the briny scent of the ocean and the masculine scent of the bedding and an unfamiliar rocking motion swirling like storm season sludge in the pit of her stomach. It's early, she thinks; Harry is still sleeping soundly on the thin straw pallet he'd laid out on the floor the previous night. 

She sits up, looking over at the lavender-gray shadow of dawn seeping in through the porthole glass.  

Someone would've likely found Vincent's body by now. She can't imagine his disappearance going unmentioned—going unnoticed—not if he'd been  _ordered_  to track down Harry, like it had seemed. What had Harry said?  _He's been gone_ _for_ _seven years_ _and you're still doing his bidding from the bloody grave?_   

Daphne bites her lip. 

Astoria couldn't possibly be shipped off to Scotland if the man she was supposed to marry there had been  _murdered_ , could she? And their father couldn't possibly give her to  _Nott_ while Daphne was missing, or presumed dead, or presumed  _kidnapped_ , or...or any number of things— 

"You alright?" Harry suddenly asks, voice deep and low and raspy with sleep.  

Daphne glances down at him, and then looks away so quickly she almost gives herself whiplash. Because he's  _shirtless_. And he'd been stretching his arms above his head, yawning, popping the muscles in his shoulders and his neck and his upper back, scratching at his chest as his blanket pooled in a positively indecent puddle around the narrow cut of his hips.  

"Excuse me?" she blurts out, eyes flitting wildly around the room.  

"I asked if you were alright," he says, sounding bemused—maybe even a bit curious.  

Daphne bites her lip again and impulsively brushes the salt-stiff ends of her hair with her fingers. "I could...probably use a mirror," she admits, rubbing at the loosely tangled coils of her braid. A fish-tail, Astoria had called it. Scales and all. "And a bath?" 

Harry visibly brightens. "I can— _we_ , I mean—we can certainly do that," he says, springing to his feet. He shrugs a white linen shirt back on, absently tucking one side of it into his breeches, and then bangs his fist on the cabin door. "Oi! Water!"  

"Oh, you don't have to..." Daphne tries, half-heartedly. 

"Just stocked up," Harry says, flashing her a crooked, vaguely conspiratorial grin. "We haven't exactly been doing a lot of—" 

"Pillaging?" 

"Yeah. That. So, you know, still have loads of cargo space." 

"For hostages?" Daphne asks, sweetly serene.  

He looks taken aback for a moment—amused and surprised, but not pleasantly so—and then his grin fades. "I'm not...no one's here to hurt you. It's not like that." 

She swallows, picking restlessly at the creases in her skirt. "Then what's it like?" 

The door swings open before Harry can answer.  

It's the red-haired pirate, Ron, heaving two battered metal buckets full of steaming hot water into the room, grunting his thanks when Harry reaches out to take them. Harry then jerks his chin towards the desk, sloshing water over the chipped porcelain rim of the bathtub, and Ron holds up two ink-fuzzy sheets of parchment with a slightly cagey frown, shaking his head as he stuffs them into his jacket pocket. 

"Hermione's mad at you," Ron says, casually leaning back against the desk, ankles crossed, arms folded over his lower abdomen. "Think she might've made Creevey cry at breakfast." 

Harry puffs his cheeks out. "Couldn't hide out at sea forever, could we?" 

Ron slants a considering look at Daphne. "Think she's madder about the pretty little highborn virgin you accidentally kidnapped, mate." 

Daphne's stomach twists with resentment and anxiety and a piercing knot of indignation, even as her eyes widen and her mouth falls open and Harry resolutely steps in front of her, as if to shield her from the implications of Ron's statement. 

"Seriously?" Harry hisses, the nape of his neck burning red beneath the brown of his skin. "You can both fuck right off with that, I would  _never—_ _"_  

Ron rolls his eyes. "Calm down, you giant  _girl_ _,_  it was a bloody  _joke_." 

"Right," Harry says, tone clipped, dismissive, "just—give those maps to Hermione and set course, then." 

"We have a course now?" 

Harry pauses. "Yeah." 

Ron hums and glances at Daphne again, gaze disturbingly shrewd, before pushing himself off the desk and striding towards the cabin door, calling out, "That fucking black-sailed monstrosity followed us all night, by the way!" 

Harry releases an impatient breath as the door clicks shut, shoulders slumping. He then turns to Daphne, expression inscrutable. "Right, well. There's...that," he says carefully. "And I'll just..." He waves his hand, shuffling over to the desk and dropping into the accompanying chair, firmly facing away from the bathtub set up beneath the porthole. "Be here." 

"Wait, you—surely you don't need to—" 

He rakes his fingers through his hair. "Look, no offense, but the people I trust most in the world don't trust  _you,_ and they think that—" He cuts himself off. "It doesn't matter. It's just—the fact that you had a piece of that map  _hidden_  in your  _dress_  was. Well. Suspect." 

Daphne's nostrils flare. "I  _told you_ —" 

"I don't know you well enough to determine if you're a good liar or not, unfortunately," Harry interjects. "So. Sorry. Can't leave you alone." 

Daphne blinks, an incredulous giggle lodged in the back of her throat— 

She barely waits for him to look away before she starts to tug at the front of her dress, pulling laces free and shimmying out of her corset and lifting her chemise over her head, ripping off her garter, her stockings, flinging it all onto the bed, the floor, and then standing, for a magnificently surreal split-second, completely naked in the middle of a pirate captain's private quarters.  

Lowering herself into the bath is heavenly. 

Scrubbing at the leftover sweat and grime and sand on her skin, unpinning her hair, stretching her neck back to relax against the porcelain lip of the tub—it's even better. 

Harry's holding himself almost preternaturally still, Daphne notices, his muscles tense, his posture stiff, like he's steeling himself for a fight.  

"I really am sorry," he eventually says, sounding more uncomfortable than he does sincerely apologetic. "I'm not normally this much of a bastard, I swear, it's just...we're so close to the end." 

"The end of what?" she asks, putting a fair bit of effort into keeping her voice even. 

Harry shifts around in his seat. "Have you heard of Voldemort?" 

"The pirate?" 

"Yeah." 

"I thought he was dead." 

"No," Harry says with a mirthless chuckle. "No, he's not dead." 

"You seem very sure of that." 

"He disappeared about seven years ago." 

Daphne curls her toes against the bottom of the tub.  _He's been gone for seven years and you're still doing his bidding from the bloody grave._ She straightens her spine. "What does that have to do with you?" 

"He got paranoid, right before he went into hiding. Really—really  _brutal_ , you know, didn't leave any survivors behind when he raided, not even...not even women, children," Harry says, beginning to tap his feet, not quite rhythmically. "Buried all his treasure, too. Spread a bunch of rumors about himself, about what he could do." 

Daphne's mind races as she bends forward to wrap her arms around her knees. "The map I had."  _The letter her father had received._ "That was Voldemort's?" 

"Part of it, yeah." 

"And the...the  _end_  that you're close to—that's the treasure." Daphne goes cold despite the lingering heat of the bathwater. "And Vincent...him and his father and Mr. Nott and, and  _my_  father, too, I suppose—they're after it, too, aren't they? And they have their own clues. That's why you won't take me back." 

"It's not—" 

"I'm collateral. I'm a  _prisoner._ _"_  

"I wouldn't—" 

"And it isn't about  _time_  at all, is it," she goes on, more stridently. "It's about leverage." 

Harry doesn't say anything for a while, the silence between them ringing out, pulsing with a peculiar sort of energy—and then he turns, slowly, to look over at her, his eyes pinned to her face, his skin still flushed red with embarrassment, or anger, or both, but there's an intensity to how he's staring at her now that hadn't been there before and she wonders, not a little unkindly, if he'd really,  _truly_  believed her stupid enough to not figure any of this out. 

"Daphne," Harry murmurs, hesitant, and it's— 

It's only the second time he's ever said her name, she realizes, but then—it's hardly even been half a day since they'd  _met,_ and how was that even possible? It feels, to her, like an entire year's gone by since she'd snuck out of her father's study, locked the servants' door behind her, and crept down the fissured dirt path to the sugarcane fields, a pilfered compass clutched in her hand and a tattered treasure map tucked into her corset. 

Except it hasn't been a year 

It's been a night. 

Abruptly, she dunks her head into the bath, letting her hair float around her in loose, dark blonde waves before she resurfaces to comb it back. Take a deep, penetrating breath. Seek out Harry's gaze, skimming the water-spotted wings of her clavicle and the swollen curve of her mouth and lower, higher, scorching and unfathomable and bewildering.  

She doesn't understand.

_I'm not...no one's here to hurt you. It's not like that.  _

She doesn't  _care._  

"My sister," Daphne starts, deliberately, distantly  _cool_ as she stands up, water sluicing down the dip in her waist, the flare of her hips and the inside of her thighs and the flat of her lower abdomen, her hands trembling as she reaches for the flannel hanging from the hook on the wall. "If she's hurt, or she's missing, or she's—she's  _damaged_  when I return, I don't care how creative I have to be about it, I will run you through with your own sword and then feed you to the nearest pack of seagulls." 

Harry gapes at her, looking stunned—stunned and helpless and strangely, ravenously hungry—before he spins around, banging his knees on the edge of the desk, hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides. 

Daphne doesn’t bother speaking, after that.

 

* * *

 


	4. IV

* * *

 

The rest of the day passes quietly. 

Uneasily. 

Daphne sits cross-legged in the center of the bed, idly flipping through a remarkably dry treatise on the function of trade winds in the Royal Navy's patrol schedules, while Harry does something cryptic at his desk with a large spread of maps and compasses and pointy brass instruments. Occasionally, he'll sigh and groan and stalk out of the cabin, ostensibly to go and discuss his findings with...his crew, or his friends, or his  _minions_ , Daphne certainly doesn't know. He always returns, though.  

The sun is setting when Harry appears with two heavy plates of bread and cheese and a rough-hewn wooden bowl full of shiny green apples. He wordlessly drops down next to her on the bed and tears at a crusty dinner roll. Chews. And chews. And chews. He smells like leather and saltwater and the pillow she couldn't help but bury her face in the night before.  

"Your sister," Harry eventually says, stilted and awkward. 

Daphne freezes, hand outstretched, fingertips brushing the waxy smooth skin of an apple. "What about my sister?" 

"You've mentioned her a few times. And what with her being  _betrothed_  to—well, to who she was betrothed to—I'm just—is she in some kind of...trouble?" 

Instead of answering, Daphne takes a mechanical bite of her apple, barely registering the flavor. Tart. Moist. Crisp. Refreshing. She wonders what Astoria had done this morning when she'd realized that Daphne hadn't returned. Had she alerted someone? A servant? A maid? A footman, perhaps? Were people out searching for Daphne, even now? Was her disappearance being linked, however tenuously, to Vincent's death? To her mother's? 

"Before I was born, my father funded several of Voldemort's less...less savory expeditions," Daphne finally says, catching a runaway drop of apple juice with a quick swipe of her tongue. "The ones the Royal Navy claimed not to know anything about." 

Harry coughs. "There were a lot of those." 

"It was a secret," she continues. "And tons of his friends were doing it, too, weren't they? A bit of a clever, roundabout way of skimming more profits off of Company trading." 

Harry taps his thumb against the rind of a slab of cheese. "Yeah. Yeah, they were all doing it." 

"Yes. Well." Daphne clears her throat. "They're blackmailing him now." 

Harry pauses. "What?" 

"I actually—I think they've  _been_  blackmailing him, for years, since before my mother died, and I think, well, I think he didn't...I think he didn't comply at first," Daphne confesses in a great heaving rush of words, unable to  _stop_  them, to stymy the flood, too desperate to alleviate the aching weight of that heavy, stabbing pressure in her chest. "And I think they punished him for that. I think they've  _been_  punishing him for that." 

Harry goes perfectly still. "How long ago did your mother die?" 

"Seven years." 

"Who?" 

"Excuse me?" 

Harry leans forward, carelessly setting his plate aside, and props his elbows up on his knees, scrubbing at the stubble on his jaw. " _Who_  is blackmailing him?" 

Daphne shrugs. "I don't know for sure. The letter I read...it wasn't signed." 

"Guess, then," Harry grits out. 

Daphne scrapes her teeth over the cushion of her bottom lip. "Vincent's father." 

"And?" 

"One of the other planters on the island—Mr. Nott. Theodore Nott." She swallows. "Did you know he actually  _disowned_  his son? Banished him, even? It was quite the scandal, not that anyone would tell me what really happened." She smiles grimly. Faintly. "Put Mr. Nott in the market for a wife, of course." 

Harry jerks in surprise. "Are you—" 

"Engaged, yes." 

"To...to this—Mr. Nott." 

"Yes." 

"Right. And your sister—" 

"Vincent was ill-equipped to acquire a wife the usual way, I suppose," Daphne says, ripping up a small piece of bread. Crumbs litter her plate. "And Mr. Nott...well, he needs a new heir, doesn't he? A replacement for the old one?" 

Harry turns, slightly, to look back at her, his gaze flinty and aggravated and  _sad._  "Your father's being blackmailed, and you and your sister are the required payment? To keep him quiet? Do I have that—is that correct?" 

Daphne's stomach clenches and quivers as she processes the furious undercurrent of Harry's voice, which she tries and fails not to read too much into—because how long has it been, truly, since she'd felt even  _remotely_  like someone other than Astoria would take her side? Would fight for her? With her? How long has it been she'd felt anything but ornamental? Useless? Like the garnish on a particularly average dinner course?  _Pretty_ _little highborn virgin_ , Ron had called her, and it hadn't been a reduction. Not really. It had been a statement of fact. A practical, itemized list of all of Daphne's most valuable traits.  

"Well," she says now, mouth going dry, "they wanted money, too, and additional ships for protection from...from pirates, but—yes. My sister and I—we were mentioned." 

Harry cracks his knuckles. "And the map. Voldemort's map. How did that end up—" 

"I don't know." 

"Right." 

"The letter I read just...it mentioned the map," Daphne says. "And then it mentioned a bounty, which I assumed—I assumed meant  _treasure_ , and I thought—" 

"You thought if you found the gold you could use it to get out of your engagement," Harry finishes, eerily blank. 

"Astoria's engagement." 

"What?" 

Daphne shakes her head. "It was never about getting  _myself_  out of anything. If it wasn't Mr. Nott, it would've been someone just like him." 

The finely sculpted line of Harry's jaw tenses. "I don't understand." 

"It wasn't about me," Daphne says, as plainly as she can. "It was about  _Astoria_." 

Harry furrows his brow. " _What?_ " 

"Vincent was going to take her to Scotland." 

"Yeah?" 

"She would've been  _miserable_  in Scotland." 

"Oh." 

"Astoria loves it here." Daphne swallows, loudly, painfully, the corners of her mouth curving up in a wistful sort of smile. "She loves the ocean, and the sun, and the colors, you know, how  _vibrant_  everything is, and our mother...our mother, she's buried here, and it was—there were—there are so many  _memories_ , I suppose. Better ones. Happier ones."  

Daphne stops, and sniffs, and picks at her wedge of cheese. It's tangy, creamy, softer than she'd thought it would be.  

"Astoria would've been miserable in Scotland," Daphne says again, more subdued. "I just—after our mother—I couldn't just  _let_ it happen, could I?" 

Harry leans back, his wrist grazing the bend of her elbow, before looking at her askance, his expression contemplative, because he isn't, Daphne finally allows herself to think, finally allows herself to  _notice;_ he isn't as prickly or as sharp or as indifferent as he likely wants to be. As he likely _needs_  to be. 

"Before," Daphne whispers, tangling her fingers in her lap, folding them one over the other. "You said you were on a...on a quest. That's what you said." 

"Yeah. I did." Harry curls his tongue over the ridge of his front teeth, a muscle ticking in his cheek. "Voldemort—that wasn't always his name." 

Daphne snorts. "Obviously." 

A ghost of a grin, then. " _Obviously_." 

"What was his real name? Was it something very dashing?" 

"Tom. Tom Riddle." 

"Oh. That isn't dashing at all." 

"No?" 

"Well, I suppose  _Riddle_  is a bit mysterious," Daphne concedes.  

Harry gently takes her plate from her, bending down to deposit it on the floor, and doesn't move for a minute. "Tom was a nobleman's bastard." 

"Oh.  _Oh._ _"_  

"He grew up alone," Harry continues, almost dispassionately. "Abandoned. An orphan. That isn't particularly unique, though, is it?"  

Daphne frowns. "No, I imagine it isn't." 

Harry laughs at that, a slow, solemn, deceptively brittle sound. "When he was...sixteen, seventeen, he went back to his father's estate. And—this is a secondhand account, of course, but...apparently the resemblance between them, him and his father—apparently it was uncanny, and his father reacted quite badly." 

"Oh." 

"Tom killed him, in one of the drawing rooms, and then...wanted a reminder? A keepsake? Evidence? I don't know." Harry purses his lips. "He took a ring." 

"A ring," Daphne repeats. 

"One of those—those massively ugly ancestral signet rings, yeah." 

"Why?" 

"Tom liked to tell people—his enemies, his crews, his supporters, whoever—that this ring, this ugly fucking  _trophy..."_ Harry trails off, rubbing at the crown of his head. "He liked to tell them that it had  _special, magical properties_. That by wearing it, he could persuade virtually anyone to forego their own will in exchange for his. That he could  _control_  them." 

"That's...that's preposterous. Isn't it?" 

Harry flaps his hand. "It's...none of it's  _real_ , it was all just part of his—part of his reputation. But a lot of men believed in it then and believe in it now and ever since he...went away...there's been this mad sort of  _race_  to find the ring, and the treasure he claimed to bury it with, and that's—that's my quest. That's what I'm doing." 

Daphne doesn't quite know how to respond to any of that. It sounds idiotic, and insane, and rather like something out of a nightmare, or a racy adventure novel, or one of Astoria's breathlessly-recounted afternoon daydreams.  

"Oh," Daphne says, nonplussed. "I see." 

"Mm." 

"And that's—that's your quest." 

"Mm." 

"Are you winning?" 

"What?" 

"You referred to it as a  _race_ ," she says innocently, ducking her chin to hide her smile. "Are you winning?" 

Harry glances at her, green eyes glittering with something complicated—something like begrudging amusement, reluctant warmth—before he slowly, as if to give her ample time to pull away, draws his arm up and around her shoulders, thumb stroking beneath the cap-sleeve of her dress. Outside, she can hear the ocean methodically lapping at the belly of the ship. 

"I am, yeah," he says seriously. 

"Winning?" 

"Mm." 

Daphne hesitates, and then carefully lets her head fall to the side, pressing her cheek to his chest, listening for his heartbeat, wrapping herself up in him—and he seems to reflexively pull her closer, the steady drag of his breath stalling, stuttering, speeding up— 

It's all very thrilling. 

Exhilarating.  

Dangerous. 

 

* * *

 


	5. V

* * *

 

They drop anchor in a shabby little port town the next morning. 

The sun is high and bright in the sky, beating mercilessly against Daphne's neck, and Harry's hand is tentative where it hovers above the small of her back as he guides her up the narrow, rickety stairs that lead out to the upper deck. She looks around with mild interest, taking in enormous, bristling coils of oil-slick rope, haphazardly stacked crates and corked wooden barrels sealed tight with black tar, heavy linen sails neatly rolled up in varying states of disrepair—there are guns, too, gleaming cast-iron cannons and small kegs of gunpowder spaced between the railings, the masts, enough so that she doesn't immediately notice that her and Harry are very much alone. 

"Where is everyone?" she asks, belatedly, draping the end of her braid over one shoulder and shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. She's going to freckle, she thinks with a substantial measure of vindictive, resentful glee; she's going to  _burn_. "Don't you have a crew?" 

"They have the day off," Harry replies, striding towards what appears to be some kind of pulley-operated plank that's already been lowered to the dock below. "They'll all be drunk by now, or just, um." He winces. "Otherwise occupied." 

"At a brothel?" 

"Um," Harry chokes. "Maybe?" 

"You thought I was from a brothel," Daphne says thoughtfully, trailing after him. "The other night." 

"Mm." 

"Why?" 

A dark red flush snakes up the collar of his shirt. "Does it matter?" 

Daphne peers out at the ocean, all foamy white caps and glittering turquoise water, a crystal-clear horizon stretching out farther than she could possibly ever hope to see. It's odd, she muses, that the world has never really struck her as particularly large, or particularly menacing, or particularly  _boundless_ —not like it feels now, not like it should've probably always felt, because it  _is_ large, and it  _is_ menacing, and it  _is_ boundless, and there's more to the integrity of its makeup than home, than Scotland, than this tiny, nameless island with the ramshackle docks and the flimsy paper town and Harry's hand, callused and rough, held out for her to take as he waits to disembark. 

"Sorry," he mumbles, helping her keep her balance when she steps forward; the plank is wobbly, and her slippers are half-ruined from traipsing around the sugarcane fields the other night. "For having to drag you with me, I mean—I would've had Ron or Hermione stay with you here, but they, um, they have...something else to do—to look for—and this shouldn't be that difficult, anyway, you know, kind of a get in, get out...situation..." 

Daphne bites down on the inside of her mouth to suppress a giggle. "Harry." 

"Mm?" 

"I can't imagine why you seem to think I'd rather be stuck on a  _boat_  than—" She breaks off, a lukewarm rush of embarrassment flooding her cheeks, staining them pink. "I'd just rather go with you," she finishes, staring determinedly at a nearby pile of seaweed-strangled fishing nets. "If it's...if it's all the same." 

 Harry licks his lips. "It isn't." 

"Excuse me?" 

"It isn't," he repeats with more confidence. "All the same." 

Daphne realizes that she's still clutching his hand. "Right," she says, glancing around with what she's sure is transparently feigned fascination. A grimy trio of sailors are eyeing her speculatively, leering and winking and nudging one another. "Are those your—do you know them?" 

"What? Who are you—oh." Harry scowls, somehow looking both murderous and mortified, and tugs her closer, slinging a slightly too-casual arm around her waist, plastering her to his side, propelling her towards the end of the dock. "No, I don't know them." 

"Oh." 

He shoots the sailors a venomous glare. "It's considered bad luck to have a woman on board, they probably just think you're—" 

"From a brothel?" Daphne manages to ask, shakily playful. 

Harry snorts. "Yeah. That." 

"You don't think I'm bad luck?" she blurts out. "I mean, not just me, of course, there's...there's your friend, too—" 

"Hermione, yeah," Harry interjects, smoothing his palm down the curve of Daphne's hip, gently maneuvering her around a puddle. "And—no. I don't. Superstitions like that...they're...it's the same kind of— _thing—_ that Voldemort took advantage of, right? How he became so fearsome, so  _followed?"_  

Daphne hums, looking curiously at the small cluster of buildings they're walking past—there's a sagging, two-story inn on the far side of the street, and, next to it, something like a trading post beneath a large canvas tent, overflowing crates of fruit and silk and spices and rum lining the edges; there's a tavern, too, the sounds of clinking glasses and loud, feminine shrieks of laughter echoing out from the partially open windows.  

"Not going  _there,_ " Harry says tactfully, drawing Daphne towards a rough, barely-visible path leading from the beach into a wildly overgrown jungle. "Here. It shouldn't be far." 

"Come here often, then?" she asks, flashing him a teasing smile. 

He trips over an exposed tree root. "Um," he says, patting the front of his shirt, presumably where he has some sort of map tucked away. "No, just—there's a formula? For the clues. He was...um. Quite precise about it." 

"Oh. Well. Don't you need a shovel?" 

Harry unsheathes his sword and hacks at a knot of thick green jungle vines. "Why would I need a shovel?" 

"To dig." 

"For what?" 

"For the  _clue_ ," Daphne says, lifting her skirt to her knees, trying in vain to avoid catching the silk on the thorniest bits of a nearby bush.  

"Tom doesn't really like getting his hands dirty," Harry replies, huffing out a laugh. "This won't be hard to find now that we have your father's part of the map." 

"Oh." 

"Yeah, this—this is the seventh clue. The last one, I think. We think. Tom likes doing things in sevens." 

"Oh." Daphne blinks. " _Oh_." 

"What?" 

"No, just—you said it's been seven years since he disappeared, didn't you?" 

Harry swats a mosquito and swings his sword at another mossy tangle of vines; it's oppressively hot out, the air so heavy with moisture that it's practically steaming where it touches the ground, and sweat is dripping down his face, his neck, glistening against the deep bronze-brown of his skin, his shirt sticking to the sinuously flexing muscles in his upper back.  

"Yeah, seven years," he says, panting. "Why?" 

"If he likes sevens so much, maybe he'll mysteriously reappear soon." 

"Hermione said that, too, actually, but—I don't know. I've always thought he had to be just...holed up in some hideous  _manor_ , laughing at all of us for going through so much trouble to locate whatever's left of his gold." 

Daphne shrugs. "That's not really what everyone's after, though, is it?" 

"What do you mean?" 

"Just, well—" She stops, stumbling backwards and flailing her arms and barely managing to swallow her scream when she sees the absolutely  _enormous_  spider crawling across a stray banana leaf, less than an inch from her foot. She freezes. "Oh, my  _god_." 

Harry looks back at her with obvious alarm. "What? What happened?" 

"Could you—please just—" Several of the spider's legs wiggle ominously as it scurries from one end of the leaf to the other. "Oh, god, please kill it!" 

"Kill what—oh." 

" _Kill it_." 

"Daphne." 

"It's going to  _bite me_ , and I'm going to  _die_ , and then I'll have to, have to  _haunt you_ , forever—" 

Harry chuckles. "I'm not killing it." 

"But—" 

"No." 

"It has  _teeth_." 

"No, it doesn't." 

"It could be poisonous!" 

"Oh, it's definitely poisonous," Harry says solemnly, compressing his lips into a quivering line, as if to stave off more laughter. He then reaches for her hand, threading their fingers together, and gingerly tugs her over the butt of a moss-covered log, shielding her from the spider. "That's why I don't want to kill it." 

Daphne sniffs. "That's ridiculous." 

"Mm." 

"It was the size of my  _head_." 

"Not quite." 

" _Yes_ , quite." 

"You know," Harry says conversationally, "Ron—my first mate—he's  _petrified_  of spiders." 

Daphne blinks. "Really?" 

"Yeah. Screams like a banshee whenever he sees one. His brothers used to put them in his bed when he was younger. Think that made it worse, honestly." 

"Astoria used to collect worms," Daphne sighs, wrinkling her nose at the memory. "And centipedes. All those tiny little legs, and they're so...they're so  _slimy_ , too, just—awful. Disgusting. They'd escape from their jars and wind up in my  _shoes_ and—" 

Harry cuts her off with a short jerk of his chin, bringing them to an abrupt halt in the middle of a small clearing.  

One moment passes, and then another, and then he's pressing his body snug against hers, his chest to her back, and he's tall enough that his mouth fits right next to her ear when he ducks his chin, breath swirling hot and sweet and intoxicating as he whispers— 

"Stay quiet for me, love." 

Daphne goes still.  

Her corset is pinching her ribs, and her eyes are locked on the ground, where there's sand and dirt and damp, heat-wispy remnants of leaves and vines and tree bark and flower petals; and his hands are on her hips, blistering, bruising, like branding irons through the fabric of her dress; and there's a dazzling, almost effervescent sort of  _tension_  buzzing beneath the surface of her skin, scrambling for traction, for purchase, and it's both a blessing and a curse when he moves away, awkwardly shuffling around her, and rakes his fingers through his hair. 

"Sorry," he finally says. "Thought I heard something." 

Daphne forces a smile. "It's—it's fine." 

"We're, um. We're actually..." Harry gestures towards the opposite side of the clearing. "We're here." 

"We're—really?" 

"Yeah. Really." 

And Daphne isn't entirely sure what she'd been expecting—another swordfight with a masked assailant, or a false jungle floor with a twenty-foot drop into a skeleton-rigged cavern, or, at the very least, some incredibly athletic  _digging,_ perhaps—but she gets none of it. 

Instead, Harry counts seven paces back from a seemingly random palm tree; pauses; glances left, and then right, before narrowing his eyes at a  _second_  seemingly random palm tree; and then crouches down and begins to sift through a shallow puddle of rust-red, iron-tinged dirt. 

" _There_  we go," he mutters as he climbs to his feet, brandishing a dark green glass bottle. "Got it." 

Daphne stares. "Is that—I'm sorry, is that  _rum?_ " 

"Mm?" He inspects the tattered parchment label, holding the bottle up to the sun, and then nods to himself, apparently satisfied. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's rum." 

"Oh," she says delicately. "Is the rum...a clue?" 

Harry smirks at her, looking truly, wickedly  _relaxed_ for the very first time. "The clue isn't the rum, love, it's the back of the label." 

She licks her lips. "The glue?" 

"No, the invisible ink." 

"So, what, you're just going to pour the rum out?" 

"Well. We probably won't be going anywhere 'til morning." 

Daphne's stomach flips and dives and lurches with something that she categorically refuses to call anticipation. "And?" 

"And," he drawls, "I  _am_  a pirate." 

"Oh?" 

"Pirates have an innate affinity for rum, I don't know if you were aware." 

"I'm not aware of much of anything pertaining to pirates, actually."  

"Daphne." 

"Yes?" 

Harry snickers, tossing the bottle from hand to the other, and then squints over at her, gaze assessing. "You ever had rum before?" 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


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